When I opened your letter, my heart fluttered the same way it had when I first met you.

I ran my fingers over each of your intricately printed letters, feeling how each word had dented itself onto the rough paper. I remember how gently I held the paper, how carefully I folded it back up into the envelope after I had finished reading it.

1. remember the distant scent of you, that fresh and comforting smell of lemon, soap, and freshly washed bed sheets.

I remember most of all how much it hurt, how much regret filled me as I skimmed through your words with my fingers hovering above the words, trembling ever so slightly.

I was the kind of girl who had never felt love like that. The kind of love that made you feel like you were valued, the kind that fulfills your soul. The one that excites you every day and always brings you something new to learn, and the one that embraces you so tightly, you think they are never going to let go.

The love that other people are envious of, the one that makes other girls go “I wish I had that with my boyfriend.”

It is also the kind of love that breaks you so bad that you don’t even know how to get back up.

That was the kind of love you gave me, Kim Taehyung.

So on the day you flew that paper airplane to me, I knew you were going to be that love. I said yes, because I was naïve, and I trusted in way too much. I wanted to experience that love, I guess.

On our first date, I fell in love with your personality. I loved your laugh, that carefree, easy-going laugh. A little while later, I fell in love with you, as a whole, the kind of love that all girls think is really “love” but isn’t. Not even close.

I thought I would never get to really love you, but I was wrong.

Looking back on my memories, I remember when you convinced me to sneak out to the park late at night with you, lying down in the grass, and you taking my hand and teaching me about the constellations. You would take my fingers and use them to trace the stars in the night sky, and I would remember looking at you, instead of the stars, because you were the brightest star, you were my very own star.

You had shown me to a whole new world.

When I was scared or sad, you’d take me into your arms and you’d let me cry as much as I needed to. You’d run your fingers through my hair and tell me how much you loved me and how you would protect me against anything that dared harm me.

And for that I loved you so darn much.

I don’t and never will understand what I did to deserve that love from you, but I am glad. So glad that I got a chance to it with someone like you. You taught me so many things I will never forget.

On the day I moved away, we both had a mutual understanding that our love, that love would be the one to break our hearts. I knew I needed you, and I couldn’t be without you. But I was so consumed in the struggles of my own life that I couldn’t deal with our relationship and everything at once.

I still loved you. I loved you so much, Kim Taehyung, I hope you know that.

At first, when I tried planning to meet up with you when I finally got the free time, you would say you had scheduled plans with a friend already, or say that you would have so much work you could barely get out of the house.

And I believed that. For a while.

Then, the texts just kept getting shorter and the calls were briefer. Then all at once, everything stopped. I kept making up stupid excuses that you were just really busy and that’s the reason you couldn’t make it, but after a while, I couldn’t keep lying to myself anymore. And I hated myself for believing in you. And so the first time I saw you with that girl, I didn’t care. I sort of already knew that would be the reason why you had been ignoring me. For some other girl.

I thought about going up to you and confronting you, but I couldn’t. I watched you guys go to the café we used to go to, the park where we used to sit and look at the stars at night, then finally, to your house.

A few weeks later, I finally mustered up the courage to go to your door and meet you after the longest time. I knew I would be heartbroken, I knew that I didn’t have the strength to keep going once I knew you had just thrown me to the side like trash, then just immediately picked up another girl because I was worthless to you, I no longer meant anything to you. Us, we didn’t have that love anymore. And when you opened the door, your arm around that girl, my heart sank and part of me wanted to run and hide forever, but part of me wanted to slap you and make you pay for what you had done to me. But I was frozen, I just stood there, not knowing what to do.

I could see the way you looked at me. There was a hollow look in your eyes, like I meant nothing to you, and I never did. And I could see the way your hand tightened around the girl’s shoulder when you looked into my eyes.

You didn’t say anything. You didn’t try to fix anything.

You just…stood there.

I forced myself to look away from you and that girl. I begged myself to wake up, wishing that this were all one big nightmare, and that soon, I could wake up in your arms, in the comfort of your presence. But I knew I was fooling myself.

The scary part of it all was that, a while later, I came to the realization that I didn’t need you anymore. I could live without you. You became just another obstacle that had momentarily gotten into the way of my life.

I moved on, of course.

I eventually stopped pitying myself. I told myself I deserved better than you, deserved better for myself. I said I’d forget you.

It was so damn difficult though.

One day, I got a call from your number. I wanted to pick up so bad, but I forced myself not to. I couldn’t just sacrifice all that hard work I put into forgetting you with just one call. I didn’t pick up.

When that girl came to my door and begged me to listen to her explanation, I let her in. I was curious to see how your relationship had played out, how happy you two were as a couple, if your love was like our love. Maybe even more.

But she told me all the things I didn’t want to hear.

She told me you two were never together. You were just friends. She had liked you, but you had someone else in your heart.

I feared hearing this the most, because I had so much resent for you, I needed for my heart to forget the love you gave me, I wanted us to be over.

I was so tired.

But hearing this, I couldn’t hate you anymore. And I wish I could, I wished she had come to tell me you were happy, because then I could hate you just a little more, knowing you on longer thought of me. Of us.

Afterwards, I tried calling you, but you wouldn’t pick up.

I don’t know why I called you, I just really wanted to talk with you, to hear your voice. Maybe to give you one more chance to explain.

But you didn’t pick up.

I knew it was done then.

This time, it was me. I was the one who didn’t try to fix things, I was selfish. I was a coward for being afraid to hear the truth.

And I knew it was my fault that I hadn’t appreciated our love earlier and loved you with all my heart and understood you, I wish I had known.

But it was too late.

Too late when I got the call from the hospital a year later that you had passed away because of the brain tumor. They told me how they had tried their hardest to fix it. I hated that, the way they treated you like an object. They said that right before you passed away, you had asked them to give me this letter you had written me.

I drove to the hospital that night, my tears blurring out the traffic lights, making my whole vision look like a blur of colorful dots. I couldn’t hear anything but the pumping of my heart and the soft rumble of my car engine in the background.

As I walked into your hospital room, there were nurses cleaning up the room, arranging the pillows on the bed, and a nurse who was pulling a white sheet over your body.

I wanted to yell at them to stop, so I could run to your side and try to shake you awake, but I knew it would be no use.

You were gone.

It was all my fault.

I walked slowly to the bedside and the nurses walked out of the room, quietly.

If I only I had known. If I made an effort to be with you.

If I hadn’t been such a ing coward.

I lifted the white sheet off of your face so I could see you for the last time.

You still looked as handsome as ever. You hadn’t changed at all. I smiled, weakly when I could still smell the faint scent of lemon and soap on your body, that comforting scent that brings back so many happy memories.

I wish you hadn’t foolishly waited for me. I wish you had moved on.

How badly I wished you were still here, no one will ever understand.

I opened your letter with care, gently unfolding the paper.

I watched as a single tear dropped down and stained the corner of the paper I was holding.

It smelled faintly of lemon and soap.

My hand trembled as I read the note which had only three neatly printed words etched into the paper. It read:

I forgive you.